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My body is my thesis: The 2009 AAAS Science Dance Contest

The 2009 AAAS Science Dance Contest is for hidden artists disguised as scientists, nerds and shameless self promoters who are tempted to dance their PhDs, upload it to YouTube and enjoy microcelebrity. A real thesis live, non-profit but for fun and a one and only chance to make a fool out of you.

This is a perfect match for John Bohannon, The Gonzo Scientist (whom I introduced you back in 2007) who is an organizer, chronicler and participator of the contest and I must say I liked the rather-theatrical-performance-than-simple-dance version of his thesis, entitled The role of the WSS operon in the adaptive evolution of experimental populations of Pseudomonas flurescens SBW25 (here).

But what to think of the performance of a professor with a thesis title: “Analysis of thymic nurse cells in the chicken”? Artist, nerd, self promoter, did I miss something?

The contest is open to anyone who has (or is pursuing) a Ph.D. in any scientific field, such as physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, anthropology, or in science-related fields such as mathematics, engineering, linguistics, bioethics, the history of science, etc. regardless of whether you’ve remained in academia.1. Make a video of your own Ph.D. dance.2. Post the video on YouTube. In the video’s information box, include your Ph.D. title and any relevant information (scientific or artistic) that you’d like to share.3. Not later than 23:00 EST 16 November 2008, email your name; current affiliation and status; the title of your Ph.D., university where it is earned, and completion date; and the Internet link to your Ph.D. dance video to: gonzo@aaas.org

Soft-updates is an alternative to this scheme where the filesystem keeps a list of dependencies that must be satisfied before a change to the filesystem can be visible on disk. For example, you wouldn’t want to write a directory entry pointing at an inode until the inode was initialized on disk and marked allocated. Softdep handles this by rolling back changes to metadata that don’t yet have their dependencies satisfied when we try to write a block. In this way we can commit any completed ‘transactions’ while keeping the disk state consistent. Softdep also allows these dependencies to discover operations which cancel each other out and thus nothing makes it to disk. For example, let’s say you create a temporary file and then remove it after writing some blocks, which compilers often do, if it all happens within the interval of the syncer nothing will make it to disk.

In this way we can commit any completed ‘transactions’ while keeping the disk state consistent. Softdep also allows these dependencies to discover operations which cancel each other out and thus nothing makes it to disk. For example, let’s say you create a temporary file and then remove it after writing some blocks